Part of the Global Plot to Expose Moonbats, conspiracy nuts, and anti-Semites, especially the Jewish anti-Semitic variety.
The leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch has described Plaut thus: "One of the most pernicious writers is Steven Plaut, a man who could be thought of as Israel's Daniel Pipes."

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

The Knesset Proposes a new Law

2. Ah the Knesset, the body whose legislation this week is always based on the headlines last week but never on thought. Last week two old women in Jerusalem were beaten up by burglars in their homes. Earlier other elderly have been hurt by burglars. So the Knesset comes to the rescue and the Knesset Members get their Kodak moments. Yesterday the Knesset proposed assaulting an elderly person a crime with considerably harsher punishments, longer jail times, than murdering the same person.

You realize what this means? A burglar breaks into auntie's flat and hits her, while stealing some cash or silverware. But then the crook thinks to himself, "Hmmm, I am now facing enormous time in jail for this, but if I just murder her and get caught, I will do a lot less jail time."

Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam, Written and Directed by Joel GilbertReviewed by Rael Jean IsaacJoel Gilbert has pulled off a remarkable tour de force: in "Farewell Israel" he has produced a technically sophisticated, visually imaginative, scholarly documentary that manages in the space of 145 minutes to investigate the belief system and history of Islam, the development of the Arab-Israel conflict (more accurately the Muslim-Jewish conflict) and the aftermath of 9/11. The documentary's enormous achievement is in bringing all this together to show incontrovertibly the total misunderstanding of Islam that shapes the policy follies of the West in general and the U.S. and Israel in particular. The potentially deadly results are summed up in the foreboding title.Farewell Israel.

Following a striking opening in which Iran's Ahmadinejad calls for "Death to Israel," the first half of the documentary offers a crash course on Islam, which Gilbert makes visually interesting through the skilful use of Islamic art, maps and graphics. (Himself a musician, Gilbert also makes good use of an original score.) This first section is centered visually by a mosque, with doors which Gilbert opens to reveal facets of Islamic doctrine and history. While lengthy and dense with information, this part of the documentary is essential to understanding more recent events. For example, Gilbert shows how Mohammad's conflicts with the Jewish tribes of the Arabian peninsula formed the basis for the development of Islam's relationship with both Jews and Christians, both tolerated in an inferior dhimmi status to a superior Islam.

Gilbert describes the amazingly rapid conquests of Islam (within a century its empire grew to be larger than the Roman empire at its height) which fortified Believers in their sense of Islam's superiority, the Golden Age of Islamic cultural achievements, and the crushing blow to Believers when the West, thanks to its growing technological edge, first turned back Islam from its European conquests and eventually assumed imperial control of much of the Islamic heartland. Given the framework of Islamic beliefs, all of this was difficult to understand and impossible for Muslims to accept. The feeling grew that Islam had lost its way and would have to turn inward, that in the phrase that has become famous, "Islam is the solution!"

Gilbert depicts the rise of Zionism and shows how the establishment of Israel and the military victory over the combined Arab states by the despised Jews posed an unbearable challenge to Islam that had to be reversed at all costs. By conveying the tremendous shock posed to Islamic beliefs, which were scrupulously laid out in the first part of the documentary, Gilbert is able to make the viewer understand Islamic attitudes and assertions that otherwise seem wildly overstated and hard to credit seriously. For example, Egypt's Nasser is shown declaring that Israel is the greatest crime in the history of mankind, while Muslim religious leaders fulminate that Israel must be destroyed lest Zionism succeed in replacing Islam and destroying Islamic identity.

But the key theme of this film is the lethal misunderstanding of the Islamic world view and its goals which bedevils Israeli policies as well as those of the United States. One of my favorite passages in the film, because it typifies the theme so perfectly, is the juxtaposition of a huge peace rally in Israel, with blue and white balloons flying and Israeli singer Miri Aloni belting out Shir Lashalom (Song to the Peace) with Arafat's urging his people to fight on. The camera goes back and forth, interlarding snippets from the Israeli rally with Arafat's incitement. The singer thrusts the microphone first before Peres, then Rabin, standing on the platform with her, who join in singing "Don't just say the day will arrive, cheer only for peace" while Arafat shouts "Fight, fight, fight" and "Jihad, jihad, jihad" and "We will march to Jerusalem."

In another fine section, Gilbert examines Sadat's strategy in coming to Jerusalem in 1977, the performance that so bedazzled the Jews and indeed the entire world. We see him address the Knesset and Gilbert shows how Sadat's words had different meanings than the way they were understood by his audience. (This too is an important underlying theme of the documentary.the way in which the same words, including "peace," "freedom," "tyranny" are understood differently by Islam and the West.)

Sadat keeps saying that peace must be based on "justice" (Gilbert notes that he uses the word fifteen times in that one speech) and defines justice (if only his listeners had paid more attention) as Israel's disappearance. "Justice," says Sadat, requires Israel to give up all the territories taken in the 1967 conflict and the return of Palestinian Arab refugees. Sadat also proclaims that Jewish independence in Palestine is illegitimate in its totality ("the land did not belong to you"). As Gilbert notes, the "peace and justice" which Sadat offers Israel in that famous speech is really only dhimmi rights in a Muslim Palestine.

And so, at the end of the Camp David negotiations, when we see Begin declaring "peace now celebrates a great victory" we can understand how Sadat saw the situation in a wholly different way . Islam had taken a major step in reducing Israel's territory on the path to her elimination.

Gilbert has assembled some wonderful historical footage. As Nazism gathered force, we see Vladimir Jabotinsky testifying on behalf of Jewish statehood before the British Royal Commission in 1936, delivering those famous lines in which he compared the claims of the Arabs and Jews to Palestine to the claims of appetite as against the claims of starvation. And, we see Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion testifying with surprisingly little conviction to that same commission, the first saying Jewish statehood might have to be put off for "hundreds of years." We also see the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini (Arafat's uncle and Adolph Eichmann's close friend) inspecting the Bosnian Moslem troops he had mobilized in Hitler's service.

Coming closer to the present, Gilbert shows how Arafat (banished to Tunisia, discredited and defeated in the wake of the first Gulf war when the PLO sided with Saddam) was rescued from oblivion by Israel's Labor government. In another visual gem, Gilbert shows Peres, in the aftermath of Oslo, echoing Sadat's demands for Israeli withdrawals one by one, this time as Israeli policy. Israel, Gilbert notes, was now in agreement with Sadat's diplomatic strategy "of stages" against her, believing this would bring peace! And Gilbert produces some fantastic recent footage of a hapless Peres falling asleep as he is asked about Iran's intentions and coming to consciousness looking as lost and foolish as he . and the government he represents . has come to be.

Gilbert rightly sums up the Netanyahu years with a single pithy sentence: promising to revoke the Oslo Accords, he simply continued them at a slower pace and having accomplished nothing was replaced by Labor.Where does the peace process come into all this? Nowhere at all. Gilbert demonstrates conclusively that there is, and can be, no peace process that leaves Israel standing as a Jewish sovereign state. Gilbert shows how after 300 years of decline Islam is undergoing a revival, and central to that revival is the rock-solid determination that the land occupied by Israel be returned to Dar al-Islam, the territory of Islam. Gilbert says "Islam must reacquire Palestine to redeem itself from Westernization on the path to successful Islamic revival."

But it is not only Israel that misreads Islam. Gilbert takes us into the aftermath of 9/11 in which he argues that President Bush fell into the Islamist trap. In a sobering, if indirect slap at the "Bush doctrine," i.e. bringing democracy to the Middle East -- and the doctrine's neoconservative supporters -- Gilbert argues that given the current "Revolt of Islam" genuinely free elections will only bring Islamists to power. This is precisely what happened in the Palestinian elections which the Bush administration insisted be held. With his talent for unearthing the perfect film clip, Gilbert shows Chamberlain on his return from Munich in 1938, but rather than seeing him pronounce the famous sentence promising "peace in our time," we see England's Prime Minister say that after his meeting with Herr Hitler he feels satisfied that "each of us fully understands what is in the mind of the other." What better way of making the point that Bush has as much insight into Islam (the religion of peace!) as Chamberlain had into the mind of Herr Hitler?

Gilbert makes no bones that Israel.and the Jews of the world not far behind.will bear the most lethal consequences of Islam's obsession with destroying Israel on the path to Islamic revival. But he offers scant comfort to the West. The documentary concludes with Gilbert's warning that the loss of Israel will erode, not enhance, the West's security, for the goal of the revived Islamist movement that we see enunciated by Ahmadinejad . bringing the whole world to Islam . will now only be pressed the harder.

I have one small cavil and that concerns the documentary's subtitle "Bush, Iran and the Revolt of Islam." In terms of accurately reflecting what the film is about, a better subtitle would focus on the West's misunderstanding of Islam.

Most documentaries are specially suited to a particular audience, but in this case the audience should rightfully be huge. For starters, every single reader of Outpost should see and see again this documentary, for there is no way to fully absorb it in one viewing. (This much is easily accomplished by ordering the DVD from AFSI.) It should be required viewing for every politician and bureaucrat, beginning with the President and his Secretary of State. It should be seen by every American who thinks Islam is similar to Christianity or Judaism. It should be seen by everyone who believes there is such a thing as a Middle East peace process.

Perhaps most important of all, every Israeli needs to see this documentary (which means the narration must be translated into Hebrew). Farewell Israel cannot fail to wake up at least some people from the delusional somnolent state into which most of the population has lapsed. But perhaps the last word belongs to a viewer from San Diego who wrote into the documentary's website: "Where it should go is on national TV and replayed at least three times a week for a year."

MA'ARIVDecember 14, 2007

Khalas Yisrael ( the end of Israel )An imitator of Bob Dylan, who is also a friend of Tsakhi Ha'Negbi, produced an Apocalyptic-right-wing movie that describes the expected destruction of Israel.

By Ron Maiberg

With the assumption that this is the last year of a Republican in the white house, it would be advisable that Israel should enjoy a few last moments of charity. In the coming years it will be difficult to produce movies like "Farewell Israel - |Bush, Iran, and the Islamic Uprising". This documentary DVD that went public two weeks ago and caught my eye on the internet is something that independent producers in free countries don't produce anymore. The viewer is left at the end of 145 long and exhausting minutes with the feeling of having seen either a propaganda piece aimed at a very particular audience, or a movie for internal use of one of the western espionage organizations that was not destroyed and had fallen into "the wrong hands". In contrast to the Bush's disconcerting flip flop on Iran's nuclear program in view of the upcoming elections, "Farewell Israel" has no uncertainties and reservations in it's description of the apocalyptic reality - using cinematic techniques that were thought to have died with Lenny Riefenstahl. Islamic intention to cause great harm to the west and to destroy Israel is rooted in the definition of Islam's existence.

When I asked Joel Gilbert, the director of the movie, whether he means total physical destruction, he answered that from Islam's point of view the Jews in Israel can find a way to continue to exist as they were always meant to exist - under the rule of Islam and its total hegemony in the region. Israelis are very familiar with what this movie promotes - in one version or another - from their earliest history and from their first encounters in elementary school. What stirs a heavy feeling of concern are the purposeful hands that sculpted this movie, the money that funded it and the complete embrace of the Israeli right . of course, a legitimate endeavor.

It's even difficult to translate the title into Hebrew. Farewell is more Shalom than Lehitra'ot; and Shalom is a questionable word in this context. It's one of those cases where we "pay" for the double-meaning of the word "Shalom".

MA'ARIVDecember 14, 2007

Khalas Yisrael ( the end of Israel )An imitator of Bob Dylan, who is also a friend of Tsakhi Ha'Negbi, produced an Apocalyptic-right-wing movie that describes the expected destruction of Israel.

By Ron Maiberg

With the assumption that this is the last year of a Republican in the white house, it would be advisable that Israel should enjoy a few last moments of charity. In the coming years it will be difficult to produce movies like "Farewell Israel - |Bush, Iran, and the Islamic Uprising". This documentary DVD that went public two weeks ago and caught my eye on the internet is something that independent producers in free countries don't produce anymore. The viewer is left at the end of 145 long and exhausting minutes with the feeling of having seen either a propaganda piece aimed at a very particular audience, or a movie for internal use of one of the western espionage organizations that was not destroyed and had fallen into "the wrong hands". In contrast to the Bush's disconcerting flip flop on Iran's nuclear program in view of the upcoming elections, "Farewell Israel" has no uncertainties and reservations in it's description of the apocalyptic reality - using cinematic techniques that were thought to have died with Lenny Riefenstahl. Islamic intention to cause great harm to the west and to destroy Israel is rooted in the definition of Islam's existence.

When I asked Joel Gilbert, the director of the movie, whether he means total physical destruction, he answered that from Islam's point of view the Jews in Israel can find a way to continue to exist as they were always meant to exist - under the rule of Islam and its total hegemony in the region. Israelis are very familiar with what this movie promotes - in one version or another - from their earliest history and from their first encounters in elementary school. What stirs a heavy feeling of concern are the purposeful hands that sculpted this movie, the money that funded it and the complete embrace of the Israeli right . of course, a legitimate endeavor.

It's even difficult to translate the title into Hebrew. Farewell is more Shalom than Lehitra'ot; and Shalom is a questionable word in this context. It's one of those cases where we "pay" for the double-meaning of the word "Shalom".

MA'ARIVDecember 14, 2007

Khalas Yisrael ( the end of Israel )An imitator of Bob Dylan, who is also a friend of Tsakhi Ha'Negbi, produced an Apocalyptic-right-wing movie that describes the expected destruction of Israel.

By Ron Maiberg

With the assumption that this is the last year of a Republican in the white house, it would be advisable that Israel should enjoy a few last moments of charity. In the coming years it will be difficult to produce movies like "Farewell Israel - |Bush, Iran, and the Islamic Uprising". This documentary DVD that went public two weeks ago and caught my eye on the internet is something that independent producers in free countries don't produce anymore. The viewer is left at the end of 145 long and exhausting minutes with the feeling of having seen either a propaganda piece aimed at a very particular audience, or a movie for internal use of one of the western espionage organizations that was not destroyed and had fallen into "the wrong hands". In contrast to the Bush's disconcerting flip flop on Iran's nuclear program in view of the upcoming elections, "Farewell Israel" has no uncertainties and reservations in it's description of the apocalyptic reality - using cinematic techniques that were thought to have died with Lenny Riefenstahl. Islamic intention to cause great harm to the west and to destroy Israel is rooted in the definition of Islam's existence.

When I asked Joel Gilbert, the director of the movie, whether he means total physical destruction, he answered that from Islam's point of view the Jews in Israel can find a way to continue to exist as they were always meant to exist - under the rule of Islam and its total hegemony in the region. Israelis are very familiar with what this movie promotes - in one version or another - from their earliest history and from their first encounters in elementary school. What stirs a heavy feeling of concern are the purposeful hands that sculpted this movie, the money that funded it and the complete embrace of the Israeli right . of course, a legitimate endeavor.

It's even difficult to translate the title into Hebrew. Farewell is more Shalom than Lehitra'ot; and Shalom is a questionable word in this context. It's one of those cases where we "pay" for the double-meaning of the word "Shalom".

I asked Gilbert why does such a pro-Israeli movie "dress-itself-up" with such a provocative name like "Bye Bye Israel," and Gilbert said, "things have more than one meaning and there are pros and cons on each side" ... could be.

But there is nothing ambiguous in the DVD-cover image of the Arab fighter in a kefiyah holding a loaded Kalashnikov. The movie leads us, throughout the 145 minutes of didactic, monotonous, decisive and assertive statements, to the inevitable conclusion: Khalas Israel. Unless Israel wakes up, together with the sleepy West, to the recognition that this is what Islam commands according to its sources, its Holy Scriptures and its prophets: Conquer the Jews.

Gilbert, who started the distribution of the DVD two weeks ago and is negotiating with TV networks to show on TV, is . among other things . the leader of an impersonation of Bob Dylan musical group. This is the type of band that presents an evening of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix songs as impersonators. This "schtik" has been running for about ten years by now, with Gilbert as Bob Dylan. He appeared all over the world already. The band is called "Highway 61 Revisited". Through the years, it was joined by Scarlet Rivera, Rob Stoner and Bruce Longhorn . musicians that played with Dylan. They also composed the soundtrack for the movie. Gilbert has never gained Dylan's personal recognition, but the two hold similar political opinions.

It is easy to see how this movie can become a hit with the Israel supporting Christian right. Gilbert claims he produced this movie by himself. However, this is quite an expensive production, with respectable quality, animation, and archival material which in itself costs (in general) thousands of dollars per minute of broad time. For those of us born into this bubbling "publishing world" stew, Gilbert is one more violin out of tune in the philharmonic. The problem is that Gilbert's professional credentials are quite meager for carrying such a heavy intellectual load. He helped research a book on Jabotinsky for Shmuel Katz; he learned about Islam from Eli Keddouri; he wrote a book that is a basis for a movie; and he is a friend of Tsakhi Ha'Negbi. Not exactly Dan Meridor, lacking self restraint. Katz and Ge'ulah Cohen are mentioned in the movie without relation to the context.

Gilbert's major villains are the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, that according to Gilbert is among those who brought about the Holocaust, the deceased Anwar Sadat that took everything while giving nothing and was murdered by "Believers", and obviously, Achmadinejad, and in a way that is not at all amusing, Shimon Peres and Yitzak Rabin (we had an unconvincing conversation on the subject). Peres is presented by Gilbert yawning and waking up from a deep sleep in order to answer a question. The murder of Rabin is mentioned as a footnote in history.

This is a season in which the shelves of Israel and the Middle East fill up with a multitude of books and movies such that the natural inclination is to ignore them. Many of these products are "suicide bombs" . they explode in the bag on the way home.